Round five of Norway Chess 2025 featured three classical draws followed by three armageddon wins. GM Magnus Carlsen won the armageddon game with Black against GM Fabiano Caruana to extend his lead. GM Hikaru Nakamura had winning chances in both the classical and armageddon games against GM Arjun Erigaisi, but blundered in a winning position to lose the mini-match. Finally, GM Wei Yi made up for a missed chance in classical with a white armageddon win against World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju.
GM Koneru Humpy is the sole leader of Women’s Norway Chess 2025 at the midway point after she beat GM Lei Tingjie in armageddon while co-leader GM Anna Muzychuk lost to GM Ju Wenjun. The one classical win of the day was for GM Vaishali Rameshbabu, who described her victory over IM Sara Khadem as “very smooth.”
This is a flash report. The full article will be added to this page soon.
Round six starts Sunday, June 1, at 11 a.m. ET / 17:00 CEST / 8:30 p.m. IST.
Norway Chess Round 5 Results
Vaishali scored the only three-point classical win of the day, but we still saw four decisive results out of the five armageddon battles.
Open: Carlsen Stays On Top, Arjun Escapes, Wei Shines
Carlsen leads by a point, though in this format it’s not a massive gap. For instance, Nakamura, in third, is potentially one classical win from catching up.
Norway Chess Standings After Round 5
GM Rafael Leitao will analyze our Game of the Day below:
Women: Humpy Takes Sole Lead As Vaishali Wins 1st Classical Game
Humpy edged ahead of Muzychuk into sole first place, while Vaishali climbed from last to fourth with her three-point classical win.
Norway Chess Women’s Standings After Round 5
Colin McGourty contributed to this report.
As we cross into the second half of the tournament, we will see the same pairings as in round one but with colors reversed. The marquee matchup will be Gukesh vs. Carlsen, where the world champion will have a chance at revenge after losing in the first round.
How to watch?
Norway Chess 2025 features Open and Women’s six-player tournaments for equal prize funds of 1,690,000 NOK (~$167,000). It runs May 26 to June 6 in Stavanger, with players facing their opponents twice at classical chess (120 minutes/40 moves, with a 10-second increment from move 41). The winner of a classical game gets three points, the loser, zero; after a draw, the players get one point and fight for another half-point in armageddon (10 minutes for White, seven for Black, who has draw odds).
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